6 - Falun Gong in Song and Dance

Summary

Abstract

Since Falun Gong was suppressed in the People's Republic of China in 1999, its activities have centred on communities of practitioners located around the world who are mainly expatriate Chinese. Since 1999, followers of the founder, Li Hongzhi, have engaged in political activity, agitating for the rights of their Chinese co-religionists in detention and pressuring the Chinese government to ease restrictions on practitioners. In the last decade, Falun Gong has developed new means of publicizing its message. Along with surveying its suite of websites, broadcast and print media organs, this chapter will examine a new manifestation: its song and dance performances by three New York-based troupes that tour Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific annually. Marketed as ‘classical Chinese dance’, they claim to preserve traditional Chinese culture. This alignment of Falun Gong with the glories of the Chinese past is a significant development in their propaganda war with the Chinese government

Keywords: Falun Gong, Shen Yun, performance, ritual, Chinese religions, new religions

More than a decade has now passed since Falun Gong was suppressed by the Chinese government in July 1999. Until the suppression, Falun Gong's activities were largely confined to China itself. Any overseas presence that the movement had was, in a sense, accidental, the result of informal expansion amongst expatriate Chinese or, very rarely, amongst westerners who had come into contact with it through friends in China or overseas. The homeland of the movement was China, the cultural universe of Falun Gong doctrine was Chinese, and the language of the scriptures was Chinese. After 1999, however, this situation changed. Now based in the New York area, Falun Gong became a diasporic organization, a collection of co-religionists scattered around the globe who were prevented from returning to their homeland. This literal de-centring of the movement changed the status of the previously relatively insignificant number of overseas practitioners of Falun Gong. They have now become an international network of communities of loyal activists engaged in a range of activities such as lobbying for the Falun Gong cause with their host governments, keeping the message of the brutality of the suppression alive and at the forefront of the minds of the foreign media, as well, of course, as maintaining their cultivation practice.